The Swedish Keystone Cops

I wrote the other day that an investigative journalist in Sweden named Nuri Kino had his doubts that the Swedish police were applying their full resources to the investigation of the murder of the Assyrian Christian university professor Fuat Deniz.

The big question is whether the lackluster performance of Sweden’s finest is deliberate, and due to political pressure, or simply routine incompetence.

Now Nuri Kino has stepped up his criticism of the official investigation. According to AINA:

Swedish Police Admit Making Mistakes in Murder Investigation

Swedish police have admitted they made mistakes in the ongoing investigation of the murder of Assyrian-Swedish researcher Fuat Deniz. More than one week after the fatal stabbing there is still no suspect. Assyrian journalist Nuri Kino, who has scrutinized the methods of the police in Örebro, the Swedish town where the murder took place, has dismissed their approach as unprofessional.

“They have committed one mistake after the other”, he says.

Kino says Fuat Deniz’s office at the Örebro University, where he was a senior lecturer, was not sealed off directly after the murder but cleaned up instead. Important evidence might thus have been destroyed. He also criticizes the police for not offering protection to the family of Dr. Fuat Deniz after the murder.

“We should have sealed off the room directly after the murder,” acknowledged investigation leader Per Jan Eriksson from the Örebro police to Swedish public television SVT. The Örebro police have now offered protection to the family of Dr. Fuat Deniz.

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The police have also failed to interview colleagues of Dr. Deniz who say they have received threats. Nuri Kino has been most perturbed by the unwillingness of the Örebro police to ask for help from experts to examine a tape from a surveillance camera in a store where a man with blood stained hands was spotted some 45 minutes after the murder. The tape is of very poor quality and the Örebro police said it is impossible to identify the man caught on it, but special investigators who have examined the tape announced it is possible to identify the man.

Nuri Kino says it may be already too late.

“Admitting some of their mistakes is good, but critical evidence and crucial time may have been lost due to their incompetence. They have committed more mistakes and they should acknowledge them too”, he says, “the specialized Investigative police must act immediately — not one day from now, not one hour from now — but right away. Each second that ticks away makes it more difficult to find the murderer. The local police in Örebro don’t have the means to find the perpetrator. What is more, most of them have their Christmas holidays and are not working.”

Nuri Kino is one of Sweden’s top investigative journalists and has received several prestigious awards. He has followed the murder of Dr. Fuat Deniz closely and says he has launched his own private investigation of the murder.

The longer the Swedish police remain “on holiday”, the more likely it will seem that Turkish pressure has caused the Swedes to drag their feet.

Are the Swedish police seriously attempting to track down the murderer of Fuat Deniz?


Previous posts on this topic:

2007		Dec		15		The Long Arm of the Assyrian Genocide
				16		Silencing Any Discussion of the Assyrian Genocide
				18		Remembering Fuat Deniz
				19		A Political Murder? Unlikely, Says Swedish Expert
				22		Soft-Pedaling the Murder of Fuat Deniz